Shabana Basij-Rasikh is co-founder and president of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA).
The Washington Post
October 11, 2025
I was talking to a teenage girl in Afghanistan last week. She was on her laptop and I was on mine. She was explaining to me how she came to understand that women don’t have the temperament to be politicians.
And then she vanished. One moment she was there. The next moment — gone.
She hadn’t shut off her computer. She had lost internet access, just like everyone else in Afghanistan. Tens of millions of people went dark in an unprecedented nationwide internet shutdown that lasted more than two days. No phone calls, no text messaging, no emails, no social media — nothing. A complete blackout for everyone in the country.
Blame immediately fell on the Taliban. Properly so. In mid-September, they cut off fiber-optic internet in several Afghan provinces, stressing the need to combat immorality and vice. But they left the mobile internet untouched. This most recent episode seemed like a ratcheting-up to total information control. The thousands of girls and women who defy the Taliban’s ban on girls’ education by taking internet classes — including the students of SOLAx, my Afghan girls’ school’s online academy — found their opportunities eclipsed, gone dark just like their computers and phones.
The Taliban said the blackout was due to upgrades to Afghanistan’s infrastructure. Was the blackout therefore merely due to technical ineptitude? Maybe. But even if so, the Taliban is very obviously working on implementing a dark vision.
The Taliban recently banned all books written by women from being used in universities in Afghanistan. More than a dozen university-level subjects have also been banned. Among them are gender and development courses and courses on women’s sociology.
Women, of course, are not attending these universities. Women haven’t attended any university in Afghanistan since 2022. Indeed, girls haven’t gone to school past sixth grade since shortly after the Taliban’s seizure of power. An Afghan girl’s formal education ends around the time she enters puberty. For the Taliban, no further education is needed for the only job a woman is meant to do.
“I’m 14 now,” the girl I was talking to, the girl who suddenly went dark last week, told me. “I have big dreams. I wanted to be a member of parliament; I’ve always been drawn to law and justice. Then I did research and found out that women are softhearted and cannot be great judges. So, I thought about other things I can do.”
In the space of four years under the Taliban, Afghanistan has become a place where women’s dreams glow only in a dim light. A place where a teenage girl can come to understand that her role in society is not what she desires it to be. A place where she can come to understand that she was wrong to even have that desire at all.
The internet is back on in Afghanistan now. And it needs to stay on. In 2023, when I spoke at the U.N. Security Council, I urged the international community to take the necessary steps to keep the internet accessible within Afghanistan. With the internet, I said, education could come into every Afghan home, into the smartphone in the palm of every Afghan girl’s hand. And we as Afghans — educators and activists — would take care of the rest.
But without the internet, it’s darkness. The Taliban made the internet go dark for two days. They can do it again, and they can do it for much longer. This cannot be allowed.
I’d like to talk to that girl again, the girl on the laptop that went dark. I’d like to share a poem with her, a poem that a different Afghan girl shared with me just a few weeks earlier. A teenage girl looked to the sky over Kabul and saw illumination there that defies all attempts at eclipse.
Ayoub Heidari of the Iranian embassy contests the claim that hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees may be released into neighbouring countries
While Iran has continuously shouldered this heavy responsibility largely on its own, international support for refugee hosting and integration in the country has remained minimal compared with the scale of needs.
Your report claims that Iran is considering “releasing” large numbers of refugees toward neighbouring countries (Iran may release hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees into Iraq and Turkey, 2 October). No such policy or decision has been announced by the competent Iranian authorities. Iran’s refugee policy has consistently been grounded in humanitarian principles, respect for human dignity, and cooperation with relevant international mechanisms.
Publishing unverified or incomplete information risks distorting realities on the ground and misleading public understanding.
Ayoub Heidari Spokesman, Iranian embassy, London
Iran has taken care of millions of Afghan refugees with little international support
The Islamic Emirate’s ban on poppy cultivation has reshaped life in many areas across Afghanistan, especially in Helmand province, where poppy was fundamental to the economy and to many farmers’ livelihoods. This is the story of one such farmer, Muhammad, who, having lost his main source of income following the poppy ban and finding that persistent drought was frustrating his attempts to grow other crops and pushing him into debt, took the desperate measure of trying to get to Iran for work. He left his wife and seven of his children and set out for Iran with one teenage son. But his journey ended in tragedy: Muhammad was shot dead by Iranian border police and his son was badly injured. In this instalment of The Daily Hustle, Nur Khan Himmat hears from a friend of Muhammad’s about his final journey and the family he left behind.My friend, Muhammad, was 45 years old, a farmer from Marja district in Helmand province. He owned seven jeribs of land (about 1.4 hectares), and for years, poppy cultivation was his main source of income. He grew opium poppies on most of his land and wheat, just for his family, on a small patch of it. When the Emirate banned poppy cultivation, he took to growing wheat and cotton. But the prolonged drought has ruined one harvest after another. His debts grew and it became nearly impossible for him to put food on the table for his family.
Debt, drought and the struggle for survival in Helmand
About a month ago, Muhammad rented out his land to another farmer for five kharwar of wheat (around 2,200 kg). He sold part of the wheat to repay his debts and kept the rest for his family. Then he joined nine other men from his village and set out for Nimruz province, where a smuggler had promised to take them across the border into Iran. Muhammad had twin 17-year-old sons; he took one with him and left the other behind to look after the family. These days, the journey is riskier than it has ever been and there are no guarantees of finding work or even being able to stay in Iran, if you can get there. The government there is taking a hard stance against Afghans. They’ve been picking people up off the street, even going into their homes or places of work and deporting them. There are even reports of Iranian border guards shooting people as they try to cross into the country. But he felt like he didn’t have a choice but to take on the risk and go there to earn some money.
The journey to Nimruz
By the time they reached Zaranj, the capital of Nimruz, it was already dark. The men from Helmand had already arranged to meet the smuggler who’d take them across the next morning. So, they spent the night in a cheap hotel and, early the next morning, joined another group that was also heading to Iran. But just as they reached no-man’s land between the two countries, they were caught by the Emirate’s border patrols and forced to return to Zaranj. The police made them promise not to try to cross illegally again. This isn’t unusual; many people try multiple times over a week or more, before they can successfully cross into Iran. The smuggler told them it would be better to try the crossing at night, using the cover of darkness to avoid detection by the patrols. After discussing their options, they agreed to try again that evening.
Crossing into danger
It was around nine at night when the group set out again. As they climbed the border wall that had been built by the Iranian government, the Iranian border patrols spotted them and opened fire. We heard what happened from two of the men from Helmand who managed to escape and make their way home to their families – although they had no news of their companions. They said that in the chaos, some of the men escaped, others vanished – no one knew who made it across the border, who had been caught and who had been killed or injured.
Later, we found out that, for my friend Muhammad, the journey ended at the border. He was shot dead, along with another man from Zabul’s Khak-e Afghan district. Muhammad’s son and another man from Zabul were injured. The Iranian police handed the dead and wounded to the Afghan authorities, who took the living to the hospital and the dead to the morgue.
Bringing him home
Later at the hospital, the police asked Muhammad’s son for a phone number so they could contact the family. At first, when they called, the police didn’t tell us what had happened. They only asked us where Muhammad was. We told them that he’d gone to Iran. That was when the man on the phone gave us the devastating news: Muhammad had been shot dead by the Iranian police and his son lay wounded in hospital.
With a heavy heart, I went with some of Muhammad’s relatives to Zaranj to bring them both home. They kept his son in hospital for two more days before they let us take him back to the village to recover. We also brought Muhammad back to his family and buried him in the village. This is how my friend’s story ends. He took a dangerous gamble out of desperation and lost. But for his grieving wife and seven children, the journey is only just beginning. They now face a future marked by grief, poverty and uncertainty, without their beloved husband and father.
The family he left behind
Every migration story is a tale of survival and in places like Afghanistan, survival can be a deadly business. My friend’s story isn’t just about one man’s misfortune – it’s just one story among thousands about the desperate choices that many Afghan families have to make just to survive.
I tell his story because details matter – how he lost his livelihood, the land he leased to pay his debts, the one twin he left behind and the other that he took along, the hopes he had of finding a living and supporting his family and the death of a good man who only wanted his family to survive – they shine a light on the human cost of poverty and the impossible choices people have to make just to keep going.
Muhammad went to Iran looking for financial security and a future for his family, but he found death instead. His children now inherit not security, but hunger, poverty and grief in a world that offered their father no safe path forward.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour
The Daily Hustle: Muhammad’s last journey – a story of survival, debt and loss
The Acting Foreign Minister of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, Amir Khan Muttaqi, will be traveling to New Delhi between October 9-16, after having received a waiver from the UNSC sanctions committee. His previous bid to secure the waiver back in September was not successful. During his visit, he is expected to meet the External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and will arrive in New Delhi after having participated in the Moscow Format Dialogue in Russia. The impending visit has raised – and might answer – important questions about how India’s relationship with the Taliban-led regime has evolved in the past four years. While there is an acknowledgement of the inevitability of engaging with the Taliban because of strategic and security considerations, concerns about what form this engagement would take and whether India can secure its interests for real, persist.
India’s Reaction In 2021
When the Taliban usurped power in August 2021 and anointed themselves at the helm in Afghanistan, India’s response to the developments was simultaneously knee-jerk and gradual. As the fighting intensified, India did not take much time to shut down its consulates and close its embassy. It was also quick in revoking visas and arranging the evacuation of Indian citizens from the country. But there was still a degree of dilly-dallying on how it intended to engage with the regime. A few weeks after the group’s return, the Indian ambassador in Qatar met the head of the political office of the Taliban in Doha in order to seek assurances about protecting India’s security and interests in the country.
Subsequently, after a visit by the then Joint Secretary of the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran division in the Ministry of External Affairs to Kabul in June 2022, New Delhi operationalised a technical mission in the country to facilitate and monitor the delivery of aid. This ad hoc, reluctant engagement has now metastasised into a tacit acceptance of the inevitability of grappling with the reality of the Taliban.
The Dubai Meeting
At the beginning of this year, the Indian Foreign Secretary met Muttaqi in Dubai – the first high-level engagement between the two sides. The meeting saw a discussion over a broad spectrum of issues between the two countries – from humanitarian and development assistance to the importance of the Chabahar port for the purposes of trade and delivery of aid. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the Taliban defined India as a key ‘economic and regional player’ in their statement. After the terrorist attack in Pahalgam in April, a delegation led by India’s Joint Secretary in the PAI division also met Muttaqi. This was followed by a telephonic conversation between the Indian External Affairs Minister and Muttaqi, where India expressed gratitude for the Taliban’s condemnation of the attacks in Pahalgam.
The January meeting between Misri and Muttaqi came in the backdrop of Pakistan’s air-strikes in Afghanistan the previous month and New Delhi’s condemnation of the same, while the April meeting and the consequent call happened in the context of the Pahalgam terror attack and India’s retaliatory strikes on Pakistan under Operation Sindoor. The Taliban had condemned the attack and spoken against how it had an adverse impact on regional peace and stability. The deterioration of ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan has consequently given India more space to engage with the Taliban.
What’s Driving India’s Strategy
While India’s relationship with Afghanistan has always been perceived as being based on the long-drawn historical and civilisational ties between the two countries, New Delhi has been cognisant of the security risks that it faces on its north-western frontier. In the immediate aftermath of the Taliban’s return, concerns about the group’s tacit support and assistance to terror groups like the Al Qaeda and the presence of groups like the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) and those particularly inimical to India’s interests like the Al Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent, the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Mohamed had raised New Delhi’s fears.
This, in addition to the growing regional engagement with the Taliban, also persuaded New Delhi to pursue its engagement. In July this year, Russia became the first country to grant de jure recognition to the Islamic Emirate, a first since the group’s return to power. While other countries like China, Iran and the Central Asian Republics haven’t granted de jure recognition, they have all stepped up their engagement – either through the exchange of ambassadors or by handing over the control of their embassies to Taliban appointees.
Breaking From Pak?
For the Taliban, engagement with India allows them to create a perception of legitimacy for their domestic constituents. Since their return to power, they have tried to pitch their approach towards foreign policy-related issues as one based on pragmatism – with its focus on a ‘balanced and economic foreign policy’. The deterioration in ties with Pakistan also allows them to hedge their bets and also show how it is no longer dependent on Islamabad for its survival – carving out an identity separate from their over-dependence on Pakistan. And while this does give India more space to maneuver, it has to be mindful of the China-Pakistan-Afghanistan trilateral as well.
Any position that India takes vis-a-vis Afghanistan is also significant from the perspective of the interests and concerns of the Afghan people. A significant fallout of New Delhi’s decision to shut down its presence in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Taliban’s return and also its decision to engage with the group has been on the people of Afghanistan. In the last few years, there has been a consistent push for New Delhi to resume the provision of visas, increase its aid and also refocus its attention on development assistance. The Taliban have also been persuading India to resume its infrastructure projects and welcome investments between the two countries. After the recent earthquake on August 31, India was one of the first countries to offer aid; it also facilitated this through the Chabahar port, offering food items, water purifiers, tents and essential medicines, thus bolstering its support to the Afghan people.
What To Expect
The current meeting is expected to see discussions on the appointment of a Taliban-supported ambassador to the embassy in New Delhi, something that the group has been seeking for a while. The Republic-era appointees have already left the embassy, back in November 2023, while the consulate in Mumbai also has an appointee who reports back to the Ministry in Kabul. Thus, the Acting Foreign Minister could push for further institutionalisation of the status quo. Muttaqi could also reiterate their demands for the issuance of more visas, investments and the resumption of infrastructure projects. For India, the priority is the protection of its security interests and extracting security guarantees from the group.
New Delhi’s growing engagement with the Taliban comes at a time when the group’s political reality in Afghanistan has become much more apparent, with more and more countries establishing some form of communication framework with them. The concerns about the proliferation of terror groups and the manifestation of other security risks in the country necessitate this engagement. For India, an expectation about balancing its increasing political engagement with the Taliban regime with its support to the Afghan people will still remain. As more and more high-level engagements become common, there will be an equal expectation of this translating into India increasing its support to the people of Afghanistan and also making a case for the group to dial down their draconian restrictions on women and minorities. How much leverage does India have in pushing for this and the trust it can impose on the Taliban’s ability to support India’s interests is still circumspect.
(Harsh V Pant is Vice President, ORF. Shivam Shekhawat is a Junior Fellow with ORF’s Strategic Studies Programme)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
Opinion | Why The Taliban Foreign Minister Is Really Visiting India
Reacting to the UN Human Rights Council’s decision to establish an independent investigative mechanism for Afghanistan to collect, consolidate, preserve and analyse evidence of past and ongoing crimes under international law and human rights violations and abuses, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, Agnès Callamard, said:
“In the face of continued impunity in Afghanistan, the establishment of a UN-mandated evidence gathering mechanism is a vital step towards advancing accountability for past and ongoing crimes under international law and paves the way for victims and survivors to access justice, reparation, and truth.
“Amnesty International, together with Afghan civil society and others, has been calling for this mechanism since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021. Since then, the Taliban has plunged Afghanistan into a system of control and repression. Women and girls have been systematically erased from public life, denied education, work and voice; journalists, activists and minorities silenced through arbitrary detention, torture and enforced disappearance; and brutal corporal public punishments and executions used as tools of fear. This assault on human rights has long demanded more than words from the international community and the mechanism is a major step in a long journey towards accountability for the people of Afghanistan.
The establishment of a UN-mandated evidence gathering mechanism is a vital step towards advancing accountability for past and ongoing crimes under international law and paves the way for victims and survivors to access justice, reparation, and truth
Amnesty International’s Secretary General, Agnès Callamard
“Today’s resolution has the potential to be an important milestone in the fight against impunity for millions of victims and survivors in Afghanistan, spanning more than four decades of conflict. However, this potential hinges on the mechanism adopting a truly comprehensive approach – one that considers crimes committed both before and after August 2021. This should include systematic targeted attacks by the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP) and other insurgent groups, as well as allegations of crimes under international law committed by security forces under the former government, international military and security forces and other agents.
“Establishing a mechanism is only the beginning. States owe it to the victims to ensure that the mechanism is properly resourced and empowered to promote justice.”
Background
Amnesty International, together with Afghan civil society and others, has been continually advocating for the United Nations Human Rights Council to establish an independent and impartial investigative mechanism on the situation in Afghanistan since August 2021. Calls for this type of mechanism emerged as early as 2003, and were renewed in May 2021, after the deliberate and targeted attack at the Sayed Shudaha Girl High School in the west of Kabul which killed and wounded over 250 people, mostly girl students. In response, with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC)’s lead, Afghan civil society organizations and international human rights organizations advocated for the establishment of such a mechanism.
Afghanistan has grappled with continuous conflict for over four decades, resulting in crimes under international law and human rights violations and abuses by warring parties including the Taliban, ISKP, security forces under the former Government and international military and security forces and other agents. Victims and survivors have had almost no access to justice, reparation, and truth. This has now worsened with the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021. Amnesty International has documented many incidents of war crimes and the crime against humanity of gender persecution, as well as other crimes and human rights violations and abuses by the Taliban and others across the country.
With no access to justice, truth, and reparation, between 1978 and 2001, at least two million people were estimated to have either been killed or wounded due to the conflict.
Following longstanding calls from Afghan and international civil society organizations, the UN Human Rights Council today adopted a resolution without a vote to establish an “independent investigative mechanism to collect, consolidate, preserve and analyse evidence of international crimes and the most serious violations of international law, including those that may also amount to violations and abuses of international human rights law, committed in Afghanistan.” While it does not have prosecutorial powers, the mechanism can collect and preserve evidence of international crimes and serious human rights violations. This evidence can support future prosecutions in international and national courts, including those exercising universal or other forms of extraterritorial jurisdiction, and for credible efforts in the future to build a framework for accountability and justice in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan: Establishment of accountability mechanism a landmark moment in pursuit of justice
A quick flick through guidebooks of the time reveals an Afghanistan unimaginably different from today: of royal levees and fashion shows and apres-ski restaurants. Facing a photo of a gargantuan mound of melons – “delicious Afghan fruits are a treat for travellers” – you’d see a picture of “a tourist and his hunting party in the Pamir mountains with a Marco Polo sheep”. Most poignant of all are images of the priceless treasures of the Kabul Museum, almost of all which are now missing or destroyed, after looting during the mujahideen takeover of Kabul in the 1990s and the smashing up of what remained by the Taliban in 2001.
In such guidebooks, there was only one place to stay: the InterContinental. This is “the finest hotel in Kabul” of foreign correspondent Lyse Doucet’s charming and often surprising memoir. “The Intercon”, as it was known, was a beacon of sophistication where Paris couturiers opened fashionable boutiques and Italian coiffeurs competed with their rival salons. Celebrated Afghan singing stars such as Ahmad Zahir (the “Elvis of Afghanistan”) lolled by the pool while his Afghan Vogue-model girlfriend shimmied past in her bikini. In the evening, guests could choose whether to drink Afghan brandy in the Nuristan cocktail lounge, dine on escargots in the Pamir supper club or attend the annual Miss Afghanistan contest in the ballroom, followed by dancing to Gloria Gaynor in the basement discotheque.
Doucet acknowledges that the Kabul InterContinental, “a white box of cement and steel”, was always, from its opening in 1969, “an iridescent bubble floating above the city’s cares”. She even hints that the kind of libertine western modernity that the hotel represented, and the corruption that financed it in what was still one of the poorest countries in the world, was partly responsible for stirring up resentments that eventually led to catastrophic and violent reactions – first Marxist, then Islamist. Nevertheless, Doucet succeeds in making the hotel an oddly successful frame for a sweeping social history of Afghanistan over the last half century and a moving symbol of its remarkable ability to endure whatever horrors fate has thrown at it.
The book opens soon after President Biden has pulled the plug on US military assistance, with a description of the tragic disintegration of a 2021 wedding feast in the hotel. The news arrives that President Ashraf Ghani has fled the country and the Taliban are at the city’s gates. Guests scatter as a Taliban pickup is spotted trundling up the hill to the hotel; the bride bursts into tears and Naeem, the banquet manager, tells the groom: “Comfort your bride! If you don’t show courage today, you will always disappoint her.”
Doucet then doubles back to the 1969 opening during the glory days of the Zahir Shah monarchy, as Kabul pullulated with nightclubs and the InterContinental played host to black-tie dinners in the only cold war capital where western and Soviet diplomats routinely invited each other to their parties. We follow the hotel through two successive coup d’etats, the assassinations of three presidents in two years, the Soviet invasion, the successful mujahideen counterattack and the rise of the Taliban. Somehow, throughout it all, the hotel manages to remain open.
What sustains the book is Doucet’s focus on the ordinary Afghans who keep the place going despite the shelling, rockets, suicide bombs and occasional massacres of both staff and guests. These are terrible affairs: during the era between the two Taliban governments, three successive suicide squads broke through rings of hotel security to maraud along the guest floors, shooting diners, throwing grenades down stairwells after fleeing staff, peppering cupboards full of hiding waiters with machine gun fire.
Today, despite everything, the hotel remains a monument to Afghan resilience and to the bravery and persistence of its staff. In Doucet, and her witty, observant and sometimes heartbreaking book, they have found a worthy chronicler.
The Finest Hotel in Kabul by Lyse Doucet review – a monument to Afghan resilience
It’s not every day that a U.S. president publicly demands the return of a military base from a former adversary. But that’s exactly what happened last week, when President Donald Trump said that his administration is “trying to get” Bagram back from the Taliban.
The statement sparked a mix of surprise and skepticism. Once the nerve center of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, the Bagram Airfield was abandoned during the messy 2021 U.S. withdrawal and quickly taken over by the Taliban. Now, four years later, it has resurfaced as Trump’s latest foreign-policy gambit, rekindling debate over the United States’ unfinished business in the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
Trump, who has repeatedly raised the issue of control of Bagram since the withdrawal, now appears to be ramping up his push. “We want it back and we want it back soon. Right away,” he warned on Sept. 20.
Media reports indicate that the White House is actively weighing options to reestablish a U.S. foothold at the base, citing both its counterterrorism value and its proximity to key Chinese nuclear facilities. Located 40 miles north of Kabul, the base remains fully capable of supporting large aircraft, drones and surveillance platforms, special operations forces, and rapid-response missions. Where its loss came to symbolize American retreat, regaining Bagram could mark a bold reassertion of U.S. power in a turbulent region.
While the Taliban quickly rejected Trump’s idea, the issue is far from settled. In recent years, internal fissures within the group have widened, driven by growing discontent over the emir’s consolidation of power and his merging of clerical authority with executive control over policy and personnel decisions.
Combined with mounting economic desperation and the escalating threat from the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), fractures are reshaping the Taliban’s internal dynamics and creating potential openings for practical engagement. Given the regime’s obsession with survival and pressure from within its own ranks, Trump’s idea is not as far-fetched as it may seem. His team could exploit these cracks through a right mix of incentives, back-channel diplomacy, and pressure from regional actors. Both symbolically and operationally, Bagram remains one of the few fixed assets capable of reinserting U.S. influence across the South Asia and Central Asia regions.
“If Afghanistan doesn’t give Bagram Airbase back to those that built it, the United States of America, BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN!!!” Trump wrote in a Sept. 20 Truth Social post. That blunt threat signals a possible recalibration of U.S. posture in a region where U.S. influence has sharply declined. Since the withdrawal, IS-K has rapidly expanded operations, terrorist safe havens have resurfaced, and U.S. intelligence collection has weakened considerably. Meanwhile, China, Russia, and Iran have moved aggressively to fill the vacuum.
The case for returning to Bagram is driven by urgent security requirements. U.S. government assessments warn that IS-K could rebuild its external operations capabilities within months if left unchecked. With no physical U.S. presence in Afghanistan, the current over-the-horizon model, which relies on distant bases in the Gulf, is a poor substitute for the proximity and on-the-ground visibility needed for effective counterterrorism.
The administration now faces several potential pathways, each fraught with risks and trade-offs. The real challenge lies in structuring an arrangement that delivers meaningful value without inviting mission creep or open-ended commitments. Trump’s penchant for transactional diplomacy could give him a unique advantage in striking such a deal.
The most direct route forward would be a negotiated agreement with the Taliban, either as a stand-alone deal or an expansion of the existing U.S.-Taliban Doha framework. In exchange for partial or full access to Bagram, Washington could offer what amounts to a survival package that includes economic assistance, counterterrorism cooperation, and gradual steps toward political normalization and easing sanctions. The Taliban would almost certainly demand international legitimacy, starting with a seat at the United Nations, as well as relief from financial and travel restrictions. A more distant but significant opportunity lies in potential U.S. investment in a lithium mine in Afghanistan. If included in the broader deal, it could deliver substantial benefits for both sides and plug Afghanistan into global supply chains.
While hard-liners, especially the emir in Kandahar, are expected to resist any accommodation with Washington, other factions within the Taliban’s uneasy coalition may privately favor such a deal as both tolerable and profitable. The emir, however, is neither untouchable nor invincible, particularly if he refuses to compromise and faces dissent from within his own ranks. Although direct dialogue with the emir remains largely untested, the regime’s broader reality as an isolated, cash-strapped hermit state increasingly vulnerable to IS-K offers meaningful leverage. These conditions may make a negotiated opening more plausible than it might appear.A more politically acceptable alternative could involve a third-party arrangement, potentially outsourcing Bagram’s management to a Gulf intermediary such as Qatar or the United Arab Emirates, a NATO member such as Turkey, or even a Central Asian partner such as Uzbekistan. These countries maintain close ties with the Taliban, have accepted regime-appointed ambassadors, and remain close security partners of Washington.
Under such an arrangement, Bagram could be repurposed as a joint counterterrorism hub and training facility, technically overseen by an external partner but functionally enabling U.S. access for intelligence collection, surveillance, and operations.
Qatar, for instance, already hosts a U.S. interests section within its embassy in Afghanistan and facilitates back-channel talks with the Taliban. Uzbekistan, which shares a border with Afghanistan, still houses dozens of U.S.-supplied combat helicopters and other military equipment previously provided to the former Afghan government, assets that the Taliban are eager to recover. But more importantly, Uzbekistan faces serious threats from at least four Uzbek jihadi groups, all of which enjoy Taliban sanctuary and maintain operational ties with al Qaeda, IS-K, and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Syria. These concerns have pushed Uzbekistan to seek a closer counterterrorism partnership with Washington.
Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates manages four of Afghanistan’s main airports, including Kabul International Airport. It oversees systems and technology, terminal operations, and ground services, giving it considerable visibility into Taliban logistics and movement. This role, combined with the UAE’s deepening technological footprint in Afghanistan’s telecommunications and energy sectors, further enhances its insight into the regime’s internal workings. The UAE has also hosted Taliban dissenters and enjoys high-level, direct access to senior Taliban leadership, including during sensitive engagements such as hostage negotiations.
Such a third-party arrangement could provide Washington both legal and diplomatic cover while minimizing the optics of direct engagement with the Taliban. For the Taliban, it could provide a face-saving narrative by allowing them to present the partnership as engagement with a fellow Muslim nation rather than with the United States itself. While they may demand some visibility into U.S. activities at the base or seek to limit certain operations, especially those targeting al Qaeda, a workable compromise could still preserve the United States’ core counterterrorism capabilities on the ground.
A third option could draw on the post-9/11 precedent with Pakistan, where the United States operated for years from airfields in Jacobabad and Pasni under the nominal control of the Pakistani government. That arrangement showed how even adversarial or uneasy partners can collaborate when the right incentives or threats are on the table. A similar low-visibility setup at Bagram could enable U.S. personnel to operate discreetly in designated zones, possibly with Taliban-appointed liaisons serving as intermediaries. Though politically delicate, such quiet engagement would mirror existing forms of U.S.-Taliban interaction, ranging from back-channel coordination on migration and humanitarian aid to limited dialogues on counterterrorism and narcotics issues, including the sharing of actionable targeting information. If the Taliban were to refuse such an arrangement, Pakistan could once again emerge as a fallback partner by providing U.S. access to facilities within its own territory.
Another alternative could involve a hybrid civilian-military consortium, a joint venture between select Gulf, Taliban, and U.S. stakeholders. In this version, Bagram could be rebranded as a civilian logistics, maintenance, and aviation hub with embedded security and intelligence components managed by American personnel. While unconventional, similar gray-zone basing arrangements have proven effective in places such as Somalia, Iraq, Djibouti, and the Sahel.
If formal channels fail, the United States could opt for a covert presence by leveraging intelligence networks, paramilitary units, or private contractors. This approach could build on existing relationships with former Afghan strike units, regional intermediaries, or even Taliban defectors. It could resemble the CIA-run Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams, who were recruited in the early days of the Afghan campaign and remained active in Afghanistan until the Taliban takeover. Many of the units’ members have since been resettled in the United States and partner countries.
While the risks of exposure and Taliban retaliation would be significant, this approach is consistent with the U.S. track record of operating in hostile environments through deniable means. However, such efforts could face serious challenges, including the growing threat of Taliban hostage-taking involving U.S. dual nationals, a recurring issue that has already entangled Washington in ransom-driven hostage diplomacy with the regime.
Beyond counterterrorism, the big-picture rationale for the United States wanting Bagram back is just as compelling. China is rapidly deepening its footprint in Afghanistan, pursuing rare-earth minerals and embedding itself in critical infrastructure. Russia, having moved early to formally recognize the Taliban government, is expanding its security engagement. Iran continues to move weapons, fighters, and currency across Afghan borders with little resistance. India, though sidelined, is watching with concern. And Pakistan—long a disruptive player in Afghan affairs—is readjusting its position amid rising instability inside Pakistan and growing tensions with the Taliban over cross-border sanctuaries involving the Pakistani Taliban.
To be sure, any U.S. return to Bagram would be seen by China and Russia as a direct challenge to their regional influence, likely prompting them to pressure the Taliban to resist such a move. Iran would oppose any U.S. reentry outright. Pakistan would be forced to balance its ties with the Taliban and its dependency on China to reap potential gains from renewed cooperation with Washington. India, though unlikely to say so publicly, would quietly welcome it. Ultimately, the Taliban understand that no country can, nor would, outmatch the scale of U.S. investment or rival its influence.
In the end, getting Bagram back won’t be easy. But if the Trump administration embraces a pragmatic bargain and explores creative basing arrangements, it could secure a meaningful foothold without slipping into another costly entanglement. In a region where the United States’ absence has created a dangerous vacuum—and where the Taliban have now held power for the full length of a U.S. presidential term—reestablishing access to Bagram under new terms and for new priorities could represent a significant foreign-policy win for the administration. It’s an opportunity worth seizing.
Javid Ahmad is a counterterrorism research scholar and author of the Taliban Leadership Tracker at the Middle East Institute. He also teaches at George Washington University.
The Islam Qala reception center is a pit stop for exhausted and disoriented Afghan families. Many are still in shock—unable to understand why they have been uprooted from their lives in Iran, forced to board buses with their children and their belongings, and brought to this gateway point to Afghanistan with little to no money in their pockets and no shortage of worries.
There is nothing voluntary about their return. The overwhelming majority of Afghans say they are being forced to return to Afghanistan for political reasons. After decades of living in Iran and Pakistan, they are being expelled.
Danish Refugee Council Secretary General Charlotte Slente speaks to Afghans on September 2, 2025, after their arrival from Iran to the Islam Qala rece…| Esmatullah Habibian/Danish Refugee Council
This year alone, more than 2 million Afghans have been forced to return to Afghanistan. What awaits is a country facing multiple overlapping crises.
If only Afghanistan was not in the middle of a crippling humanitarian crisis in which half of the population, or 22.9 million people, is in desperate need of aid and 3.5 million children are acutely malnourished.
If only Afghanistan was not sorting through the rubble of deadly earthquakes in recent weeks that flattened entire mountain villages in the country’s east and killed thousands.
If only Afghanistan was not dealing with sweeping aid cuts and an international community experiencing “Afghanistan fatigue” and turning its back on Afghans.
Afghanistan is simply not ready to handle forced mass returns; they place a burden on a country already at breaking point. Returning families face bleak economic prospects, severe lack of health care, and lack of shelter. Returning women and girls face barriers to study, work, and safe movement.
At the Islam Qala reception center, carts laden with boxes and suitcases pulled by young men under the sweltering September sun zigzag across the courtyard, as Afghan families follow their belongings closely behind.
Zahra, 25, is wearing a black dress and green scarf while clutching her smartphone and blue plastic folder with paperwork. Around her, other Afghan families that have been forced by Iran to return to Afghanistan crowd around private buses for onward journeys to Herat city and beyond.
Zahra’s father is sick and cannot work, and she is responsible for her brother. In Iran, she worked and provided for the family. Now, in Afghanistan, she faces a stark reality: She was a baby when her family took her to Iran in 2000. “This is my first time seeing Afghanistan,” she told me. “I have no shelter; I don’t know anyone.”
Surveys and interviews with more than 700 Afghan returnees in March 2025 by the Danish Refugee Council’s Mixed Migration Centre showed that 65 percent of women reported receiving no assistance—a reminder that in an era of mass expulsions, women and girls are hardest hit, putting their lives at risk and pushing them deeper into despair.
Afghanistan’s crisis intensifies their struggles: Strained resources make it difficult for women and girls to access food, clean water, health care, and education. Female-headed families face extreme poverty, exclusion, and higher risk of exploitation.
“We are happy to return [to Afghanistan], but if we can’t find work what are we to do?” asked Zahra.
DRC is helping Afghans with cash assistance to meet their immediate needs, including food, shelter, and travel. In addition, our staff educate returning Afghans at key border crossings about the silent threat of explosive remnants of war in one of the most contaminated countries in the world.
This assistance is a drop in the ocean of needs.
My biggest worry is that the international community has cut and run at a moment when Afghans need our help. Western funding cuts, including sweeping U.S. reductions, will result in 2.5 million fewer people reached in Afghanistan, according to DRC analysis using the AI-powered Foresight model.
For Zahra, what comes next is a struggle for survival and hard choices. She must choose where to head, find a roof for the night, and come up with a plan. She needs to enroll her brother in school and get her father seen by a doctor and treated.
Most of all, Zahra needs to find work and start earning money. Starting over requires legal identity documentation that many people forced to return to Afghanistan simply do not have. There will be fees to pay for new documents, appointments to attend, and potential delays. Women cannot travel freely to appointments or be served without a male relative.
There is no escaping the heavy truth: Women like Zahra carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. But wealthy nations can lighten that load and still make a difference in the lives of people—including women and girls—by staying committed for the long haul and helping sustain dignified lives for men, women, and children. That is what standing in solidary with Afghans looks like.
Charlotte Slente is the secretary general of Danish Refugee Council (DRC).
A Forgotten Crisis—Mass Forced Returns Are Pushing Afghanistan to a Breaking Point | Opinion
When President Trump announced during a press conference in London that he was in the process of trying to regain access to Bagram Air Base, it came as a surprise for some — especially judging by the look on United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s face.
But for those who have followed President Trump’s remarks on Afghanistan, his comments were not unexpected. On several occasions, he had called it a strategic mistake to hand over Bagram to the Taliban in 2021 and has even suggested that the United States should take it back.
That said, President Trump also bears responsibility. His deal with the Taliban during his first term set the stage for America’s full withdrawal. President Biden could have changed course but chose not to.
And now the United States is left with a resurgent Taliban that controls more of Afghanistan than it did on the eve of 9/11 and an al-Qaeda and ISIS that operate freely across the country. President Trump now has an opportunity to correct Biden’s mistake and reestablish America’s position in Afghanistan.
At the press conference, he said one of the reasons Bagram mattered is because it is “one hour away from where China makes its nuclear missiles.” While this may be an exaggeration, Bagram’s strategic location in the 21st century is undeniable.
Within an eight-hour flight of Bagram lies roughly 85 percent of the world’s population and more than half of the Earth’s landmass. Inside this radius are many of the world’s major trade and transit routes, along with the bulk of its strategic resources: an estimated 75 percent of global rare earth mineral reserves, 70 percent of proven oil reserves and 65 percent of proven natural gas reserves.
For the U.S., a foothold in Bagram brings major benefits in the era of great power competition. Afghanistan borders both Iran in the west and China in the east, while to the south lies Pakistan and then India. To the north is Central Asia, where Russia seeks to expand influence.
Bagram’s location has been important since antiquity. When Alexander the Great came through in 329 BC, he established Alexandria in the Caucasus where Bagram is today — so named because he mistakenly believed the nearby mountains were the Caucasus. In fact, they are the Hindu Kush.The Macedonian warrior knew he needed a well-fortified outpost to govern his newly conquered lands, and the terrain made Bagram the best location.
For the Soviets, Bagram’s location was equally critical. Its proximity to Kabul and to the eastern part of the country — one of the main battlegrounds during the Soviet war — made it a centerpiece of their presence. Many of the facilities on the base trace to Soviet construction.
After 9/11, the U.S. modernized and expanded them, including a second 11,800-foot runway designed to handle even the largest and heaviest military transport aircraft.
This layered history underscores why Bagram remains one of the world’s most valuable airfields.
Trump claims that he and his officials are already in contact with the Taliban. The Taliban, however, deny this — likely because of internal infighting. Any hint that one faction is talking to the U.S. would raise suspicions among internal rivals. If an arrangement with the Taliban to access the base fails, the U.S. should consider all options to reestablish a presence in Bagram.
After more than two decades of operations there, U.S. forces know the base and surrounding terrain intimately. It is worth noting that anti-Taliban forces such as the National Resistance Front, led by Ahmad Massoud, maintain a stronghold in the Panjshir Valley less than 50 miles away.
While reentry will be difficult and not without risk, it is certainly doable. Once reestablished, operating and defending the base could be modeled on the U.S. presence at al-Tanf in Syria, where a deconfliction zone ensures safe and secure operations.
Since the early 19th century, there have been 19 instances of American or European intervention in the region, whether militarily or diplomatically — roughly once every decade.
Nobody expects U.S. troops to return anytime soon, but nobody expected an intervention in August 2001, either. Should circumstances require America to reengage, it would be invaluable to have a presence on the ground.
Luke Coffey is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute.
Why reclaiming an Afghan air base is in America’s national interest
A scene from “Bodyguard of Lies,” which chronicles years of U.S. failure in the Afghanistan conflict. (CBS/Paramount+)
“Bodyguard of Lies,” a documentary examining the deceit that drove the longest war in American history, takes its title from a Winston Churchill line: “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”
It’s difficult to say whether truth was considered precious, during the decades that the United States was mired in military conflict in Afghanistan. As the film demonstrates, it was certainly in short supply.
The film adapts a 2019 investigation in The Washington Post, “The Afghanistan Papers,” which uncovered hundreds of firsthand accounts from generals, diplomats and other government officials about what went wrong in the conflict. In their reporting, The Post’s Craig Whitlock, Leslie Shapiro and Armand Emamdjomeh found that those unvarnished remarks often directly contradicted statements made by those same leaders to the American public — adding up to decades of deliberate deception. (Whitlock was also executive producer on the film and appears in it.)
In the movie, director Dan Krauss draws on the revelations from that cache of documents, interviewing a number of people involved in the conflict, including John F. Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction; Gen. David McKiernan, the four-star general fired during the Obama administration; and Maj. Gen. Edward M. Reeder, who commanded the U.S. Army Special Forces for much of the war.
Krauss and I spoke over Zoom a few days after the documentary’s Sept. 23 streaming premiere. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Going into this project, what was your sense of public memory of the war?
I mostly ran into a lack of interest, to be honest. I think even before the war was over, the American public had really tuned out. Now — what is it, four years after the war has ended? — Afghanistan feels really distant in the minds of the American public. It feels like a lifetime ago, to many.
Can you tell me about how you identified and recruited some of the on-camera interview subjects? Especially when it came to senior military officials, I was curious about why you chose the people you did — and whether there were people you wanted to get but couldn’t.
I said early on to the team, it’s not about the war, it’s about words. There’s been so much terrific landmark reporting about the war itself, and I didn’t want to repeat the work that had come before us. I wanted to keep a very tight focus on the lies — on the differences between what the American public was being told and what those same officials knew to be true behind closed doors.
So who do you recruit to tell that story? There are some obvious players, the big-hat, brand-name players that we could’ve tried to get. It didn’t seem to me that we would learn anything new by putting them in front of the camera again. So I was really focused on handing the microphone to people who hadn’t already spoken at length on this subject — and also people who could speak most directly, and most honestly, to their own role in propagating this rosy picture of the progress being made in Afghanistan.
For my money, General David McKiernan, the four-star general who was fired, is really the hero of the film. He’s deeply introspective and honest about his own experience. He said he’s seen it twice now and each time he’s been very bothered — I think he said troubled — by the film. He was one of the only people who spoke up and said the solution to Afghanistan was going to be a political solution, not a military solution. But there were times, as you saw in the film, whereas he said — you don’t lie, but you maybe don’t say as much as you could, about how difficult the road ahead is going to be. He has a certain amount of regret, I think, for doing that. He acknowledges a certain degree of complicity.
Retired Gen. David McKiernan in “Bodyguard of Lies.” (Jigsaw Productions/Paramount+)
The documentary grew out of the revelations of the Afghanistan Papers, which were published in late 2019. Do you think their publication significantly changed the way the war was conducted?
I have no idea. I mean, I have to — I would like to think that kind of reporting would have an impact. I can’t think of Craig’s reporting without thinking about the Pentagon Papers and Daniel Ellsberg and the Vietnam War. The lies that were told during that war are very like the ones we were being told during this one.
The heart of the film is, as you say, words and deception from the government. Do you think the American public believed the deception?
Certainly, in my neck of the woods and maybe yours, too, I don’t think anyone ever believed that the war was going as well as they were telling us. I don’t know that the sales pitch was really thoroughly effective, at least for people who had a critical eye.
But it’s one thing to sense that, and it’s another thing to read it or to hear it. And that’s what the Afghanistan Papers did, at least for me. … Craig asks in the film, how do you prove that someone’s not telling the truth? Well, in the case of his reporting, you get the receipts.
Right, and then how do you prove that the person isn’t just self-deluded, but is actively telling you something they know to be untrue?
There was a certain degree of self-delusion that went into the lies, and there was also this very American brand of can-do optimism — that if you say something out loud, you will it into being. We are going to win. We are going to create a democracy in Afghanistan. You have to say it out loud in order for it to happen — and if you say it out loud then it puts an enormous amount of pressure and responsibility on the people beneath you.
A scene from “Bodyguard of Lies.” (Danfung Dennis/Paramount+)
By that token, do you think the Biden administration deserves more credit for, in some sense, dispensing with these illusions? The U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan within his first year in office, at some political cost.
I don’t know. I think what’s not discussed, and what I felt was important to include in the film. is the fact that the Trump administration negotiated an agreement with the Taliban, essentially in secret, without input from the U.S. Congress or the Afghan government. Biden inherited that agreement. So there’s certainly a legitimate debate to be had about whether the withdrawal was accomplished as effectively as it would’ve been under another government — who’s to say? Certainly there are strong feelings on all sides of that. But what’s not acknowledged as much is the agreement that led to that withdrawal.
I ask because while watching this documentary, I imagined some theoretical young person who might be getting their first real education about the war. They learn about the lies that got us into, and prolonged, this conflict — then all of a sudden it’s over, and that’s also a calamity. But at some point there must have been a pivot. Some leaders, somewhere — during either the Trump or Biden administrations — took a different course of action and dropped the illusion that we should stay in Afghanistan.
The war ended so disastrously that giving credit to anybody seems really daunting. It’s less about giving credit than reminding people how the end of the war came about: that it was not Biden deciding on his own, unilaterally, to end the war, and it was not Trump actually going through the difficult task of logistically pulling our military out of the country, which is a very, very difficult and dangerous thing to do.
At one point, John F. Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan, almost lays down a gauntlet for the viewer: We should learn our lesson, so we don’t screw up if some president someday promises us a splendid little war. Do you think there are also lessons specifically for the American press corps, especially as they navigate a much more hostile environment? To cite just one example, the Pentagon recently demanded that journalists pledge not to obtain any unauthorized information.
I remember when we bombed the nuclear facilities in Iran and reporters were asking questions about the effectiveness of those strikes — very fair questions, given that American service members were put at risk, and taxpayer dollars and political capital were expended. But there was this sense in the briefing room at the Pentagon that it was unpatriotic to ask questions about the effectiveness of that military strike.
That was one example; the pledge is another. When I see the briefing room at the Pentagon now, I don’t think we’ve learned any lessons, and that things have gotten, in fact, much worse.
The American public has a right to know what’s being done in their name. The idea that it’s unpatriotic to demand answers from our political and military leadership — that’s really scary.
Sophia Nguyen is the news and features writer for the Books section at The Washington Post. She previously served as assistant editor on the National Politics desk and as an assistant editor for Outlook.
New documentary scrutinizes the lies that fueled the war in Afghanistan
The United Nations says aid workers are still in a “race against time” to remove rubble and rebuild after the devastating earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan last month, killing at least 2,200 people and cutting off remote areas.
The 6.0-magnitude quake on Aug. 31 was shallow, destroying or causing extensive damage to low-rise buildings in the mountainous region. It hit late at night, and homes — mostly made of mud, wood, or rocks — collapsed instantly, becoming death traps.
Satellite data shows that about 40,500 truckloads of debris still needs to be cleared from affected areas in several provinces, the United Nations Development Program said Wednesday. Entire communities have been upended and families are sleeping in the open, it added.
The quake’s epicenter was in remote and rugged Kunar province, challenging rescue and relief efforts by the Taliban government and humanitarian groups. Authorities deployed helicopters or airdropped army commandos to evacuate survivors. Aid workers walked for hours on foot to reach isolated communities.
“This is a race against time,” said Devanand Ramiah, from the UNDP’s Crisis Bureau. “Debris removal and reconstruction operations must start safely and swiftly.”
People’s main demands were the reconstruction of houses and water supplies, according to a spokesman for a Taliban government committee tasked with helping survivors, Zia ur Rahman Speenghar.
People were getting assistance in cash, food, tents, beds, and other necessities, Speenghar said Thursday. Three new roads were under construction in the Dewagal Valley, and roads would be built to areas where there previously were none.
“Various countries and organizations have offered assistance in the construction of houses but that takes time. After the second round of assistance, work will begin on the third round, which is considering what kind of houses can be built here,” the spokesman said.
Afghanistan is facing a “perfect storm” of crises, including natural disasters like the recent earthquake, said Roza Otunbayeva, who leads the U.N. mission to the country.
Afghanistan Peace Campaign
